Gunwalloe - Church Cove
View across Church Cove in Gunwalloe at the base of the Lizard Peninsula.
The church is St Winwalloe with it's distinctively seperate bell tower and surrounding Tamarisk hedge....
newlyn house
Wonderfully painted frontage....
rogers tower
A folly built 18th C, for Mr Rogers, a local landowner....
I didn't realise that I had an act that needed "cleaning up".
Williams is right when he says that we are reviving a language. The SWF process, and discussions both before and since, show that there is much we all yet have to learn about the language. During the compilation of KS, for example, several knotty problems turned up and we realised that no one had ever tackled these in any depth before.
Several like yourself, Pieter, pour scorn on the use of neologisms in Williams's dictionary, but none of you seem to have read his preface which says:
"This is very much a pioneering work and some, perhaps much, of the new vocabulary presented below will not find favour with Cornish speakers. This is only to be expected and I would very much like to hear from any user of this dictionary who has alternative suggestions".
Except that none of you did. For no reason other than the fact that you all took umbrage with his criticisms of KK, none of you approached him as he had invited you to do. All he received was derision.
Williams's dictionary, alone amongst all available dictionaries of Cornish, was bang up-to-date. He even had words for CD-Rom, eye-liner and roller skate, and who cares about how many phrases he has for masturbation? (Why should you specifically look there?).
If you look under the head word FEDERATION, you will even find that he has "The United Federation of Planets". "Up Sh*t Creek without a paddle" was one that I was delighted to find there, especially as my place name research had led me to the original Sh*t Creek (Caffa Pill, Fowey - you'd have a problem rowing anything up there now - someone went and built a bloody great car park over most of it).
Bewnans hyr ha sowena dhys (as Mr Spock might have said, using a universal translator).
That was very apparent, 'marhak'. You probably didn't realise that 'Eddie-C' had an act that needed "cleaning up" either. Clearly it boils down not to WHAT is written but to WHO writes it.
Now, who was it that made a similar observation recently?
This is why we are frequently at loggerheads, because I fundamentally disagree. What's more, I think that point of view shows a total lack of confidence in the language and I believe it's politically unhelpful and probably naive.
Having a lot to learn about the language does not mean it has not been revived. I'm sure linguists learn things every day about all sorts of languages, including English. Nobody doubts their status.
You seem to be suggesting that we cannot declare the language as revived until 'knotty problems' have been tackled. There will always be 'knotty problems' - so if you're right, we will never declare that the language has been revived. I won't accept that, so as far as I'm concerned, you're wrong.
Personally I think your 'knotty problems' are irrelevant to the revival. I think Kemmyn 'knotty problems' are irrelevant to the revival too.
Solving them, if indeed they are solvable, will not get Cornish into schools, it won't encourage adults to take up the language, it won't get Cornish used in public life, it won't help build a body of modern Cornish literature, it won't train teachers, and it won't give people confidence in speaking the language rather than agonising over whether to use an 'i' or a 'y' in some obscure word that you've been arguing over for months or years.
The tragedy is that you will manage, without a doubt, to force these matters to be treated as if they were critically relevant, and getting the revived language 'to market' will continue to stall.
Of course I've read the preface. You really have got to get out of this habit of assuming you know what people do and don't do and what their motivation is. You're about to do it again in the next quote...
Are you seriously suggesting that the tens of Unified users of his dictionary that did not send in suggestions did not do so because they all took umbrage with his criticisms of KK? Could it be that they just couldn't be bothered, or didn't feel qualified enough to send suggestions, or didn't have the time?
And could that have been the motivation of the hundreds of Kemmyn users of his dictionary that didn't send in suggestions too?
Personally I've never sent suggestions about the Kemmyn dictionaries to the Cornish Language Board either, but I assume you have since you seem to think this is what everyone should be doing. And if you haven't it can only be 'for no other reason' than 'the fact' that you've taken umbrage with how popular KK is (see how absurd this prejudging of motivation can be?).
I can't believe you are genuinely interested in that second question. I think you've fallen into old ways. I think you are suggesting something thoroughly uncivil. A phrase comes to mind that the Williams dictionary might have listed as being in common use on our streets today (when it's not, of course) - 'ypocrysy a rewl OK'.
Well, if you must bring up awful examples like this, let me explain why I am uncomfortable about it.
This phrase - 'war ryver an caugh ha ny heb ref' is not marked in any way to say that it is not traditional, that it is not in common use, that it's a translation of an English idiom with restricted use, and that (if you couldn't work it out) it is a word for word translation of that idiom.
What, exactly, is the point of translating a phrase word for word when, should anyone ever feel the urge to produce it, they could do so themselves by looking up 'sh*t', 'creek' and 'paddle'?
What's more, in order to understand this 'Cornish' phrase, 'war ryver an caugh ha ny heb ref', you have to be fluent. Very fluent indeed. Not in Cornish, but in English.
Do you think our Cornish speakers in the Czech Republic would understand 'war ryver an caugh ha ny heb ref'? Perhaps they would, but I suspect speakers of some other languages might put a very differnt interpretation on it.
Do you think you'd find the phrase in an English to French dictionary translated as 'sur la riviere de merde sans pagale'? And would any French speaker understand it?
The enterprise is, in places, completely absurd.
And while I'm having an uncivil rant, would anyone like to try to justify, or at least make an excuse for, Williams' startling translation 'ryver an caugh' - 'the sh*t's river', 'the river belonging to the sh*t'??
My question was: Why did you specifically look there? There is nothing uncivil in that, nor is it implied. It was you who introduced the subject of masturbation, not I. Who cares how many entries Williams has included for it. Personally, I couldn't give a toss . In fact, it turned out to have its uses - a certain corrupt politician, whose surname happens to be Thomas, gained the nickname "Tuchya" among some of us (and before you accuse me of libel, I can prove his involvement in corruption and, in 2002, did so, which is why he has never been in politics since).
Translation - how about "river of the sh*t"? Why "the"? Well, in English, we say: "You've dropped me in THE sh*t", not "you've dropped me in sh*t". I don't see anything particularly startling about this and I think you are making a fine art out of nit-picking.
No comment on the inclusion of "The United Federation of Planets"? I take it, then, that you are not a Trekkie.
Nor am I suggesting for one moment that the revival should not continue but I do question whether Cornish can, as it stands, yet be counted as a truly living language. It's a point on which there will be differing views but, for me, it will not truly live until it enters schools as an everyday subject and produces a sizeable new pool of young speakers with each school year. I suspect, Pieter, that you are not young. Neither am I. The language isn't really about us, other than the fact that we do our bit in our various ways. It's about the future, and ensuring that Cornish HAS a future.
Discussions about ways to make the language relevant to the modern age, with words and expressions that fit the 21st century. For several decades, a kind of complacency set in among language users. We were ignoring the young. We were doing far too little to attract them in and, by doing so, forge the language's future. How many families, during the last 30 years, have brought their own children up in Cornish? I can only think of about half a dozen. It isn't enough (not that I can play any such part - I have no kids - but I did introduce Year 7 classes at Hayle School to the language for a term a few years ago). We were all, even Ken George, keeping Cornish archaic.
William's dictionary set a precedent that aimed at the future. We needed new words and terms to suit the times and, yes, that includes ways to sound off with modern expletives (the state of today's society demands this facility more than ever before). Williams offered ways of achieving this, which is something to be applauded, not condemned. He made it clear that this was not definitive but something to be discussed, and his request for alternative suggestions was both genuine and constructive. It is a pity that this was not taken up.
I think the point is, perhaps a published dictionary isn't the place to put forward these ideas... Dictionaries are usually reserved for very specific information.
Far better to open dialogue with language groups perhaps produce lists of suggestions for words and put it out for criticism.
I don't doubt the Williams' dictionary is useful, and he's done some good work... But its the cavalier attitude or his one man band type approach that people get uppity with.
I think that's more perceived than real, Nosdan. Many people take the same view of Ken, or Morton Nance,or even Dick Gendall, but I'm sure that none of them intended to appear that way. I know, through the KS process, that Nicholas is actually very open to ideas or alternative suggestions, rather than take the "I'm right, you're wrong" approach.
Sorry, I disagree. Dictionaries exist for all sorts of purposes.
Some, like the Oxford Engish series aim to record the language as it exists in recorded form.
Malcolm MacLennan's 'Gaelic Dictionary' is designed, in large part, to explain English to native Gaelic speakers. By contrast, Derick S. Thomson's 'New English-Gaelic Dictionary' is aimed at learners of Gaelic, and contains lots of neologisms (none of them marked as such!)
Nance's dictionaries have, I believe a two-fold aim:
-- to record as much as possible of the historically attested lexicon of Cornish, and
-- to offer neologisms to make the language more usable to modern revivalists. Some of these are loans or adaptations from Breton and/or Welsh; they are generally marked as such in his C-E dictionaries, but not in the E-C ones. Other entries are calques of terms in English and other languages, but they don't seem to be marked as such.
Williams's dictionary follows in the same general path as Nance's. It has many more neologisms and calques, but without marking them as such. It may be that this is a flaw in the dictionary, and certainly I'd have preferred to see such creations labelled. But, for my money, it's still the most useful Cornish dictionary I have.
It's disingenuous of Pietercharles to suggest that Czech learners would find difficulty with 'war ryver an caugh'. The fact that the dictionary is bilingual, in Cornish and English, tends to suggest that the readership for whom it was designed is expected to be fluent in English -- including its idioms. And, of course, the reason it was designed like that would have been the quite reasonable presumption that the overwhelming majority of Cornish learners will have English as a 1st language.
However, Pieter's compassion for the disadvantaged Czech cohort of Kernewegor wannabes is a tribute to his kind heartedness, and I'm sure we all await with bated breath his forthcoming Czech-Cornish dictionary which should alleviate their sorry plight (even though he'll doubtless be inflicting Kiddie Kernewek orthography on the poor buggers!).
As a matter of fact, Williams did precisely this. I know several people who collaborated with him on the contents of the dictionary, offering suggestions and corrections.
There's even an indication of this on the book's title and biblio pages: it was published by Agan Tavas (jointly with Evertype). This makes it a fair guess that AT might just have been a teensy weensy bit involved in the design of the dictionary's contents.
That'll be 'cavalier' in the sense that he's had the temerity to point out the flaws in KK, and dismiss it as spurious 'fug-Gernewek'.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
KS: selven an Furf Screfys Savonek? -- Ya, hep wow!
I hold neither kemmyn or UCR to heart, they're just orthographies. I look with much more of an open mind than a lot of people here. I regard his attitude as cavalier. Perhaps because of his geographic isolation and academic credentials, but he tends also to be elitist in his views. Of course I've never met the guy so he might be a great person, and I may be wrong, its just my opinion.. (Nothing personal.)
Anyway, why are we scratching at our wounds before the Scabs have even formed... People shouldn't be concerned with past woes. We have a new form to be writing dictionaries in.
I hope that we can all collaborate in the next one, and perhaps produce something special. Perhaps start us on the road to the gerlyver meur pennscol edition?
Too true, 'marhak', too true. I've picked up the habit from the absolute masters of the art.
In view of your contribution you no doubt got a free copy of "Form and Content..." - have you read it? It takes nit-picking to a level previously unsurpassed.
And you'll remember 'morvyl's friend and his/her huge list of baseless criticisms of the Kesva's Cornish. They wrote, for example, 'the Kesva is disappointed' and said friend insisted it should have been 'the Kesva was disappointed'. They wrote 'gans hemma' to mean 'with this' and he/she insisted it could only mean 'hereupon'. What a nit-picking scream!!!
I think it's a case of not WHAT the nit-picking is but WHO does the nit-picking.
Now, who was it that made a similar observation recently?
[I see 'Eddie-C' is falling into old ways again, too. He and you, however, no doubt think his latest post was a model of civility.]
"Yma'n" is optional, the others are always found in the traditional Middle Cornish texts afaik, certainly "y'n". Now the texts are all verse (aside from Tregear) of a type where each line has to have an exact number of syllables (most commonly seven). So if you could say *"yn an" I'm sure it would have got used now and again when the writer was one syllable short. They seem to have used ever trick available sooner or later, so if "yn an" wasn't used then I think that's good evidence to show that it really wasn't available.
As for the others, Late Cornish starts to pull some of these apart and regularly says "ha e", "dha e" 'and/to his/her' etc. There's a project for someone to research then
Because there's an invisible or rather inaudible softened "g" there. When it gets devoiced as in a 5th state mutation (softening + devoicing) it surfaces as "h", e.g. "may hylliv" 'so that I may'. Ah, but then that woun't explain why "a" doesn't combine with verbs that begin with a vowel in any case (except parts of "boz" and "moz"). Odd, because in Breton "a" is very often dropped. Just seems to be a Cornish thing that it isn't. Stress? Rhythm? Sense??
edited by: morvran, Jul 20, 2008 - 10:41 PM
Seventy Percent of "competent & frequent" Cornish users prefer to write KK! (MAGA/CLP Survey)
Pot and kettle, methinks. The message is quite simple, you be unpleasant to me, and I'll be unpleasant to you. No hypocrisy in that, especially as I have the gonads to do so knowing that everyone on this forum knows who I am. You, on the other hand, continue to hide behind your pseudonym.
Which brings me to another question - I am fascinated by your pseudonym, the spelling of which is suggestive of South African connections. After the rise of Nelson Mandela and the fall of apartheid, a small but obnoxious group of white, redneck South Africans took their money and wandered northward to inflict themselves upon the little land of Kernow. Since then, they have been a particular problem, especially in their insistence upon treating the Cornish people as their new kaffirs.
Sorry, I overlooked that one because it's so bizarre. Even Nynja spotted that Nance's "yu" (pronounced 'you') was wrong. And with "yw" there is of course no vowel to elide with. Are there still people out there saying "yooo" There are certainly still books on sale promoting this abomination, i.e. UC's y-u-macron. I suppose that's the price you pay for absolute certainty. UC is as Nance decreed, mistakes and all, so "yw, dynnargh" etc must remain "yu+, dynargh" for all time, or maybe only for Caradar's 1,000 years. I wonder why UC users never set up a body to approve corrections to their system?
Seventy Percent of "competent & frequent" Cornish users prefer to write KK! (MAGA/CLP Survey)
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REJECTION OF PRISON TRANSFER REQUEST MEAN-SPIRITED
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. In fact, it turned out to have its uses - a certain corrupt politician, whose surname happens to be Thomas, gained the nickname "Tuchya" among some of us (and before you accuse me of libel, I can prove his involvement in corruption and, in 2002, did so, which is why he has never been in politics since).
There are certainly still books on sale promoting this abomination, i.e. UC's y-u-macron. I suppose that's the price you pay for absolute certainty. UC is as Nance decreed, mistakes and all, so "yw, dynnargh" etc must remain "yu+, dynargh" for all time, or maybe only for Caradar's 1,000 years. I wonder why UC users never set up a body to approve corrections to their system?